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himself, which was exactly what the Faeries did their best to do also.
    And, as both her mother and her brother could see, he loved Fawna.  There was no disputing that.  Anyone who bothered to look could see it plainly in his eyes whenever his gaze fell on her, which was all the time.
    But Max loved no one.  The last women he had loved had been someone Dag had also loved, a human that they had fought over a millennia ago, before Dag had become as civilized as he was currently.  Max had won her, fair and square, but Dag had decided that if he couldn’t have her, neither of them could, and he had destroyed that which they both had coveted, draining her of blood and life, right in front of Max.
    Neither of them had really been the same since, but Dag had managed to deal with his pain.  Max had never learned to forgive, and night before last, he had managed to breach both Dag’s and Dain’s security arrangements and gain entrance to the enclave where the family was holding a sacred meeting on one of their highest of holy of days – the first day of Spring.
    Max had gotten a hold of Fawna before either of them could do anything about it – practically before they knew he was in the room, and Dain had a suspicious feeling that Dag had had to surrender his love to his enemy in order to save her life.
    Of course, his sister had no idea of his theory, and he wasn’t about to enlighten her about it.  Dain would bide his time and watch what happened.  She was alive, and Max had even gone so far as to deliver her unharmed to his doorstep.  He could have killed her six ways from Sunday – including when he had her in his arms with his fang sunk into her in front of all of them that night.
    The thought of his enchanting, annoying, delicate little pain in the neck sister lying lifeless in that man’s arms made the blood run cold through his veins.  Dain didn’t know what he could do to keep his sister safe, but he already had his sages working on it.  If he had to, he’d kidnap her and have her cloistered here, but, since the bastard had already shown that he could waltz in without so much as a by your leave, there didn’t seem to been any need in that, yet, and he couldn’t see alarming Fawna any more than was necessary, especially now that she was already so upset.
    But, perhaps he could work that to his advantage anyway.
    “You don’t want to go home to your apartment, do you, Swee’pea?”
    It had been a very long time since anyone had called her that, and the only living person that could get away with it was Dain.  And maybe her mother.  Sometimes her brother could be a little too insightful.  Rarely, but sometimes.  “And what would you suggest instead?”
    “Well,” Dain settled next to her, like he used to when they were kids in the too big chairs, “I still have my bachelor pad.  .  .”
    “I thought your place in the city was a bachelor pad?  Unless there’s something you’re not telling Mom and me?”
    He gave a truly long-suffering sigh.  “I meant the one I had before Dad died.”
    That was something Fawna had to think about, and it was a very generous offer from Dain.  His place in the forest was exactly that.  The family owned a huge amount of property that was absolutely pristine woods, left deliberately untouched.  His bachelor pad was built more years ago than anyone in the clan remembered, and it was well hidden.  It was nothing like any other abode Fawna had ever known, created to blend into its surroundings and compliment them, rather than rip up and destroy the land around it, like the houses the humans built.  As a result, some of it was above ground, some of it was below ground, but all of it was sumptuously appointed, and Fawna was sure that he had kept it equipped with all of the latest in entertainment gear.  There was little Dain loved better than electronic gadgets, although she knew that it was not connected to the Internet, because of Dain’s own preferences as